Filastine - Dirty Bomb

Barcelona-based producer and percussionist Filastine is rarely in the Catalan capital! An insatiable globe-trotter, you're more likely to encounter him on stage in a London club, on a makeshift raft drifting down the Mississippi, at a breakcore party in Osaka, or in front of 40,000 people at a festival in Casablanca. In all these riot-like situations, Filastine delivers his music, blending electro, acoustic percussion aided by a sound-equipped shopping cart, all drenched in synchronized visuals.

His first album, Burn It – released in 2006 – made its way and surprised fans of hip-hop, world music, electro, and experimental scenes, as this artist, brimming with influences and immersed in multiple cultures, managed to synthesize all his sensibilities within a single debut opus. This second album – Dirty Bomb – sees the return of Filastine's urban and varied sound. It effortlessly moves from liberated dubstep to Balkan music, passing through HipHop and Bollywood, as if Filastine's Bomb were exploding in the huge, polluted mud puddle that is our world.

As a result, the kicks accelerate, defining rhythms for dances yet to be invented, string instruments mingle with programmed synthesizers and often furious percussion. Listening to the track "Fitnah" alone proves that a song doesn't need to be in English or based on a binary rhythm to become a pop marvel. As for the vocals, they are all the result of human encounters made during his travels and recorded on site. We encounter Australian aboriginal Wire MC, Japanese ECD (independent hip hop icons in their respective countries), or the contorted crunk of Hungry Ghosts. The young Gypsy La Perla closes the album with a superb vocal take recorded in a squatted cave in Granada.

Dirty Bomb follows the path laid out by Burn It and the success of Filastine's various LPs, including the remarkable EP created with his friend Maga Bo for their project Sonar Calibrado on Tigerbeat6's Shockout label.